Help Needed from Daily Fugue Readers!

Dear Readers, 

Can you help? With your support I can make my dream of publication, my own books and books by other authors and artists, a reality. But only with your support can I do this!  Sometimes there are things that we cannot do alone, and I have reached that point. I am deeply and eternally grateful to those who have backed my project so far, but only 10 per cent of the target has been reached!! and there are only 12 days left! Please please help me by donating anything you can to this project- which starts at only $1- every dollar counts- in supporting new literary publishing in Australia, we do not want to be left out of what is happening in many other places in the US and UK and Europe, and India. That is why I am doing this- to create a precedent and work out all the hard stuff to make it easier for others to follow. I am explaining what I am doing on my blog, and here and will write more about this and make it freely available. Please help me to support literature and Art in Australia. 

In respect and gratitude,

Ruth

Dr Ruth Skilbeck
Publisher

Mothers, Art and the Inner World: Women Artists Reclaiming their Creative Birthright

Readers, would be happy to have your thoughts on this, whether on this site or on facebook.
I am proposing to publish a book based on the most popular article in the Daily Fugue, which is Sex, Art and the Inner World: Women Artists Reclaiming their Creative Birthright.
This article has had four times more page views than the next most popular, which is my exclusive interview based article on artists Mary Kelly and Kelly Barrie- also a very popular article, and my short article on Tracey Emin, also with many page views.
I am wondering is it because the word Sex is in the title?
And also the word combination Sex, Art? This would be an inaccurate impression in fact, as the artists are making art about them selves, and their self based experience, of their inner world, and in the examples in the article using themselves as the models for their figurative nude studies.

However some of the artists I wrote about do make art about sexuality from a female perspective, their own, for example Del Kathryn Barton and Tracey Emin. It is part of life, and the life of the inner world, that women have discussed openly in public forums and in art and writing since the women's art movement of the 1970s. It is a sign of health in a culture and society that women can do this openly, and that it is taken seriously. So that is a good reason to publish in this area.
What are your thoughts on this topic?

Meanwhile working title of the proposed publication is "Mothers, Art and the Inner World: Women Artists Reclaiming their Creative Birthright". This will cover contemporary women artists, mothers and non mothers, whose focus is on identity, subjectivity and the self.

All the best,
Ruth

Can Deborah Kelly’s Empress Save Cementa’s Pozible Campaign?

 By Ruth Skilbeck

WANTED! Art  Empress Seeking Empire Builder of Distinction.

IN the reflexive Empire of Signs that is produced in the intersection of contemporary art, media and commerce, anyone can build their own empire by purchasing a piece of art that is symbolically reflexive of the values of the commoditized art world .

That is the subliminal symbolic equation of symbolic value that has seen the value of contemporary art translating into astronomical prices with new generations of global art collectors, keen to display that their taste matches the numbers in their hedge funds, or “just for the love of it”, have bought art that reflects the media values of the times.

 By symbolically reflecting these values, contemporary art literally becomes what it represents which is a sign, of the symbolic value, bestowed upon art by collective cultural agreements of the art world. (Whereas not everyone by all means may agree, some do, enough to purchase the works for the prices asked).

 Now anyone interested in empire building, knows that they also need to show off their taste and culture, the attributes that Bourdieu referred to as “distinction”; money alone does not an emperor make in the empire of signs that is the contemporary post modern mediated cultural realm.

All of these meanings are effectively, to this critic, displayed and played with ironically in the work by Deborah Kelly appositely titled Empress. The work upturns the patriarchal order by depicting King Kong’s former female victim as dominant Empress. Of course this also raises the question of women artists’ erotic female representation that has exercised feminist debate since the 70s, is it empowering or does it play into male fantasies? We’ll leave that one open, for now.

Right now, it’s the context of this work as the latest donation to the Cementa Pozible campaign that’s of most interest.

It may seem particularly appropriate that it is this work that has emerged as the potential savior of the Cementa Contemporary Art Festival Pozible Campaign, and at the very last minute.  As more than  one art commentator and critic has been heard to whisper of their shift into online virtual arts websites as a move to building their “online media empires”...

And now the Empress appears! Replete in symbolic splendor, sexy, semi naked, surrounded by sky scraping Empire of erotic Signs: hallucinatory phallic symbols vibrating in the epicenter of western capital values, where she upturns the legend of King Kong, and in the guise of his former female victim, grasps the monster in her hand and renders her foe helpless!

As if in fulfillment of collective dreams for a powerful female savior, the Empress has appeared with only hours to go before the close of the campaign.  Several thousand dollars more are needed to reach the target of the Cementa Contemporary Arts festival, to provide the means to “buy an artist a bed” for the nights of the festival in the rural post cement works town in rural New South Wales. 

One of a new generation of Australia’s prominent contemporary women artists, Deborah Kelly has at the last minute donated her striking work, to the Pozible campaign.

Will the Empress save the day? As we go to post, there are less than 15 hours to go. We await the outcome of this latest intervention with interest and shall keep readers posted.

Deborah Kelly "Empress" (2005-08) 5 ed. of 5
signed pigment print on Hahnemvelle cotton archival paper

Can Deborah Kelly’s Empress Save Cementa’s Pozible Campaign?

 By Ruth Skilbeck

WANTED! Art  Empress Seeking Empire Builder of Distinction.

IN the reflexive Empire of Signs that is produced in the intersection of contemporary art, media and commerce, anyone can build their own empire by purchasing a piece of art that is symbolically reflexive of the values of the commoditized art world .

That is the subliminal symbolic equation of symbolic value that has seen the value of contemporary art translating into astronomical prices with new generations of global art collectors, keen to display that their taste matches the numbers in their hedge funds, or “just for the love of it”, have bought art that reflects the media values of the times.

 By symbolically reflecting these values, contemporary art literally becomes what it represents which is a sign, of the symbolic value, bestowed upon art by collective cultural agreements of the art world. (Whereas not everyone by all means may agree, some do, enough to purchase the works for the prices asked).

 Now anyone interested in empire building, knows that they also need to show off their taste and culture, the attributes that Bourdieu referred to as “distinction”; money alone does not an emperor make in the empire of signs that is the contemporary post modern mediated cultural realm.

All of these meanings are effectively, to this critic, displayed and played with ironically in the work by Deborah Kelly appositely titled Empress. The work upturns the patriarchal order by depicting King Kong’s former female victim as dominant Empress. Of course this also raises the question of women artists’ erotic female representation that has exercised feminist debate since the 70s, is it empowering or does it play into male fantasies? We’ll leave that one open, for now.

Right now, it’s the context of this work as the latest donation to the Cementa Pozible campaign that’s of most interest.

It may seem particularly appropriate that it is this work that has emerged as the potential savior of the Cementa Contemporary Art Festival Pozible Campaign, and at the very last minute.  As more than  one art commentator and critic has been heard to whisper of their shift into online virtual arts websites as a move to building their “online media empires”...

And now the Empress appears! Replete in symbolic splendor, sexy, semi naked, surrounded by sky scraping Empire of erotic Signs: hallucinatory phallic symbols vibrating in the epicenter of western capital values, where she upturns the legend of King Kong, and in the guise of his former female victim, grasps the monster in her hand and renders her foe helpless!

As if in fulfillment of collective dreams for a powerful female savior, the Empress has appeared with only hours to go before the close of the campaign.  Several thousand dollars more are needed to reach the target of the Cementa Contemporary Arts festival, to provide the means to “buy an artist a bed” for the nights of the festival in the rural post cement works town in rural New South Wales. 

One of a new generation of Australia’s prominent contemporary women artists, Deborah Kelly has at the last minute donated her striking work, to the Pozible campaign.

Will the Empress save the day? As we go to post, there are less than 15 hours to go. We await the outcome of this latest intervention with interest and shall keep readers posted.

Deborah Kelly "Empress" (2005-08) 5 ed. of 5
signed pigment print on Hahnemvelle cotton archival paper